Camp Challenge
by binkeybella
Summary: A one-shot set around Tony's confession to Gibbs about a rather grim camp experience. Rating for language.


_**Blatantly stolen from an interview of Michael Weatherly by David Letterman on the Tonight show. It begged to be written. Well, I thought it did. AU as per usual, set early days, probably as a two-man team. Not beta'd.  
**_

Anyone who knew him besides Gibbs would never believe it, but Tony DiNozzo _did _have his quiet times, mostly when he was with his boss in the man's basement, watching him build and putter and organize and drink.

It mesmerized him into silence, concentrating on Gibbs' steady hands working a piece of wood, or

carving a delicate pattern into one, or sometimes just drawing out plans for his next project. His own father's hands, when he had spent any time with him, had always been busy – busy swinging a golf club, or a glass of top shelf bourbon, or a fist towards his son. Yes, Tony could be startlingly quiet, sometimes worryingly so to his boss. But this wasn't one of those times.

This was one of those times when Gibbs was trying to remember just exactly what Tony had had to eat during the day, and just how much sugar it all had contained. He was a babbling brook, bouncing off one subject to the other, to the point of where Gibbs could barely think up the answer to Tony's last question before Tony thought of another one. Who taught him woodworking? Did his shop instructor have all of his fingers? What was it like growing up in Mayberry? Did he get to have candy bars from his father's store whenever he wanted one? Did he date cheerleaders? Cause he must've been a popular guy with the girls. Was he the teacher's pet cause of his eyes and dimples? Why did he keep fishing stuff in his basement if he never went fishing?

Gibbs sighed the world-weary sigh of an oft-nagged, but ever-patient parent.

"You start the day with that sugary-crap cereal, DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, Boss. Was all I had, was going to get breakfast at that diner we go to sometimes and got called in before I could. Then Director Morrow had doughnuts and pastries for us, and..."

"And then all we had time for was crap out of the vending machines, yeah, I get the gist, Tony. Come on, I'll fix you something decent before you crash on your sugar high."

"Sorry, Boss, you know I have to have lots of carbs and stuff, and I don't dare eat those sandwiches out of the machines, who knows who made them and when, I think they're the main cause of sick-days at the agency."

"Not mad at ya, DiNozzo, just trying to follow the trail of evidence." he assured his second as they arrived in the kitchen. "Haven't done much shoppin' lately, don't have a big selection. I've got – some sliced cheese for toasted cheese sandwiches, some canned soup, not sure what kinds; some PBJ and bread, and some hot dogs. Lots of hot dogs, for some reason. Did you buy them?"

There was no answer, so Gibbs turned to his second to find out why. Tony was staring into space, or at a piece of gunk glued to the kitchen floor, Gibbs wasn't sure which.

"DiNozzo! You in there?"

"Huh? Uh, no, Boss, I didn't bring the hot dogs, don't eat the things."

"Hmmf, yer kiddin'! Star athlete like you doesn't do hot dogs? Can't be cause of the crap in them, you eat bologna just fine when I offer it to ya."

"Um, no, nothing to do with that." Tony answered quietly. "How 'bout the toasted cheese and soup, I'll make the sandwiches."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Gibbs replied, still looking thoughtfully at his second. "So what happened with the hot dogs, you eat too many of them one summer and get sick on them?"

Tony leaned back against the cupboards, this time looking out the kitchen window while he spoke.

"Uh, no, actually, I – I was eleven, and my father sent me off to camp, but this time it was a different one, one he had heard about from one of his buddies who had this – boy's boy. Meaning he-"

"Meaning he was a mean little bastard just like his father probably was."

"Yeah, pretty much. Name was Sterling. Used to punch me in the kidneys every chance he got when nobody was looking. Thought I was too girlie, you know, big eyes, long lashes...called me pretty boy, just like a million other guys did when I was growing up. Honestly, they all thought they were being original, like I'd never heard it before. Anyways, they weren't the only ones who thought I was a sissy. I think my father worried about me actually _being _a girl, if you get my drift, and decided he needed to toughen me up. I sure as hell wasn't into guys any more than I am now, and I don't think I could have gotten any tougher a skin than I'd grown at boarding school, but I was quiet then, believe it or not. At least most of the time back then."

"Yeah, I can see that, Tony. When folks aren't really listening to you, what's the point of talkin' to them? Pretty much where _I_ got it from, just didn't figure I had anything to say that people wanted to hear."

"Yeah, well, even when my father _did_ listen, it _still _wasn't what he wanted to hear. I think he kept thinking someday I'd open my mouth and I'd finally be the son he'd been waiting for. Never happened. Anyways, he sent me to a place called 'Camp Challenge' along with that little – bully – for a few weeks, hoping I'd come home all buff and tough and manly – you know, ready to punch other kids in the kidneys for their allowance or stock dividends."

Gibbs grimaced, but he was still listening, waiting for answers.

"So how did that work out for ya?"

"Spent half my time in the nurse's office with ice on some part of my body. I was next to half-alive when the chauffeur brought me home. My father was beside himself. Threatened to sue the camp for breach of promise, stuff like that."

"And you? What'd he threaten _you _with, Tony?" Gibbs asked quietly, genuinely afraid of what the answer might be.

"Oh, he didn't just threaten, he went ahead and did it. Packed my ass off to RIMA, told me if that didn't take the girl out of me, nothing would. That was when he disowned me. Well, no, not then actually, we still had the Maui Hilton debacle where he met my second stepmother, which was the perfect excuse to start looking for another heir who would live up to his standards."

"The bastard _had _no standards, you and I _both _know that!" Gibbs growled, getting into Tony's space.

"No decent father treats their kid that way, and for him to think you needed 'toughening up' was his _own _sissy ego talking!"

"Didn't matter at the time, Boss, all I knew was that I was wrong, that I wasn't what he wanted. It didn't matter that he wanted all the wrong things from me, he was my father, and back then, he _wasn't _wrong. I might have been angry and hurt and confused, but I still always thought he knew everything. I didn't realize half the damage he had done to me till I actually got away from him."

Tony ran a frazzled hand through his hair, still looking at his boss on and off during the conversation.

He hadn't planned on 'spin the bottle' in Gibbs' kitchen when the man had directed him to come get something decent to eat.

"Anyways, none of what I just told you explains why I hate the sight of hot dogs."

"But yer still gonna tell me. Cause I _do _wanna know, Tony."

"Yeah, well..one of the 'challenges' at the great Camp Challenge was to stick a kid out in the middle of nowhere with a hatchet, a couple of strike anywhere matches, and -"

"Some hot dogs. Who the fuck was running the place, Nazis?" Gibbs roared, completely incensed that adults would do that to anyone who, although were perhaps not little, were still basically children.

"Could've been. They all pretty much had corn cobs up their butts. The hatchet was for making a lean-to."

"So did you?"

"Well, I spent the first twenty minutes screaming, then once I got that out of my system and realized no one was coming to get me, I got to work. Didn't bother with any freaking lean-to, though. Hiked my ass back to where I thought I'd seen an old shed, think it was a ranger's hut or something. I had a general idea where it was and what direction I was going in by the slant of the sun. Not very big, maybe eight by eight, but it had a fireplace in it. I cleaned it out, checked the flue, and started a fire in it. Started raining not too long afterwards, and I cooked my damned hot dogs in front of that fire, the whole time thinking about that little s.o.b. Sterling out in the storm with his hatchet and matches. And by the way, I had sneaked cookies out of the mess hall that morning, not even knowing what was gonna happen – I was just always hungry, and they had us all on this idiot diet cause _some _of the campers still had what their parents liked to call 'baby fat'.

"Was Sterling one of them by any chance?"

"_Oh _yeah, he was pleasingly plump. Well, not so pleasingly to other people, just himself."

"You tell anyone what you did? That you didn't build a lean - to?"

"Enh, I made one on my way back to where they dropped me off, made it look like I had a fire there. Didn't really care at that point. Just wanted to go – somewhere other than there."

"Helluva thing ta do to a kid, I don't care if you were eleven. Still a kid. Shouldn't leave him out in the fucking wilderness by himself all day and night, especially if he hasn't had any experience out there."

Tony could see the nerve jumping on the side of Gibbs' forehead, a tell that he had learned meant to stand out of the way and shut your mouth, and he hurried to forestall the impending tirade.

"Easy, Boss, I wasn't as naïve as you think. Just cause this was a hard core camp didn't mean I hadn't learned anything at all the other ones, and at boarding school. Once I got myself over the fear of getting eaten alive by a wild bear, I got my head on straight and remembered a few things. Might not have had the amenities, but I survived. I had my stash of cookies and a candy bar. A canteen of water. Toilet paper was an issue, but I found an old newspaper in the shack, so I managed."

"Still shouldn't have done it to ya. Especially for the reasons he did it." Gibbs growled, slamming a frying pan down on the burner. "Nothing wrong with a boy not being a hard ass. Wouldn't have so many damned cases if some guys bothered to teach their sons to respect other people."

"Yeah, I imagine so, Boss. Wasn't trying to get you rattled, just telling why I don't like hot dogs."

Gibbs grabbed the bread out of the fridge and stuffed it in Tony's hands.

"You scared while you were in that cabin in the dark?" he asked, looking at Tony for a truthful answer.

"You damn well better believe I was. Hardly slept a minute all night. Had no idea who or what was out there."

"Good boy. You woulda been a fool not to be. And you _still _don't know who or what is out there, but at least you're not waiting for them all alone. Butter's hard, I'll soften it in the microwave a few seconds."  
He went back to fixing their soup and sandwiches, cooled off from his imminent meltdown. He was still plenty furious at DiNozzo Senior and his fool way of raising a child, and a kind-hearted sensitive one to boot, but knew he was no better if he took the man's idiocy out on his son. "Open the soup, you know where the pans are."

Tony smiled to himself as he brought out a pan from the stove drawer and opened the soup into it. The smell of it alone made him suddenly ravenous, and he couldn't wait to sit down and eat. He knew he revealed a lot more than he wanted to when he was on a sugar or pain-reliever high, but it was usually only to Gibbs, and he trusted the man not only with his confidences, but that he wouldn't be judged too harshly for his short-comings. But Gibbs had explained to him once that the only thing he considered a shortcoming in his second was if Tony knew he had deficit and did nothing to correct it, something he felt was impossible for the kid. He knew DiNozzo considered himself the ultimate fixer-uppper, and would always strive to improve on what he considered his weak points. That most of those weak points stemmed from his lack of self-worth at his father's hands didn't escape Gibbs, either. Sometimes there was an ocean of difference between Tony's self-perceived faults and his actual liabilities.

Gibbs considered it his new vocation to teach Tony that difference, and that his strong, good qualities far out-weighed any glaring faults his idiot father had convinced him he possessed. But he needed to do it in a way that Tony could accept without feeling coddled, which made the job even more appealing to the problem-solving former Marine. Right now, he'd make him some dinner and get the sugar out of the kid's system so he could have some peace and quiet before he went to bed. Tomorrow he'd throw out those hot dogs in his refrigerator.

.


End file.
